Subduction Zone
Veteran Member
How about because it is the truth?
And no, the Bible is a book of myths. You keep supporting that fact.
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Cardinal Pell and Evolution
- Thread starter Kevin Armstrong
- Start date
And no, the Bible is a book of myths. You keep supporting that fact.
Subduction Zone
Veteran Member
You have to admit the obvious first. If you can be honest enough to admit that you have never studied the Bible properly I will give you a detailed explanation of how we know that.
Yes, I know. I said so.
But I also said, "Genesis isn't an allegory. An allegory is a specified literary form. Gulliver's Travels is an allegory, which uses symbols to represent know people and events in history. Genesis is largely mythology, which are best guesses to explain what is seen." Did you want to argue that the myths actually are allegories rather than wrong guesses? Would you agree that these are different things - that a myth is not an allegory and an allegory not a myth?
They're both stories, but only allegory is a story in which characters and events in the story represent specific people and events from history know to the author, and that biblical myths don't meet that definition? These are distinct, distinguishable literary forms the way a sonnet is not a haiku, and one can point to examples of each and say this one is this and that one is that.
And would you agree that there is an extreme reluctance for believers to say that the myths are incorrect accounts? That language appears to be anathema. I can compare it to the early Greek philosophers who, like Thales, speculated that everything is water, the one substance he knew could exist as solid, liquid, or gas. This was also a wrong guess - not an allegory or metaphor - but we still honor him for his willingness to speculate with no god reference and his attempt to unify reality as a single substance.
Why is it so difficult to say something similar about the biblical mythicists? These were their best guesses as to why the world appeared to them given the premise that a tri-omni god created and ruled the world, but they were wrong. The story of Adam and Eve isn't a symbol for the evolution of and appearance of man on earth. The authors of the myths had no such concepts and weren't symbolizing anything. They were speculating, which allegories don't do.
Once again, metaphor and allegory involve substitution of a symbol for something known. When he calls her the apple of his eye, the apple is her and he knows that when he chooses that literary form. Likewise with allegory. As I indicated, it is fiction with a substitution of invented characters and events for known historical characters and events. Gulliver's Travels is a political allegory in which fantastical fictional characters substitute for prominent historical figures like Walpole in the British politics of Swift's era, symbolized by the rope dancer Flimnap. We know what these things stand for as did their author, and they are specific, not place-holders for what is not known. This is a specific literary form, and myth is identifiably different from it.
That's not what these myths are. They are erroneous attempts to explain the reality the mythologists found around them, but what believer will say so or refute the argument here that these myths are NOT allegories?
Sorry if this causes cognitive dissonance for you. I really am not looking to offend you. I'm looking for you to see that the claim of error in myth is not an insult and is in fact a more accurate description of what a myth is - a story based in speculation that was later shown to be incorrect. Do you still disagree? If so, what part of the argument do you find fallacious or factually challenged?
exchemist
Veteran Member
Please don't use psychobabble on me. It's patronising and you don't know what you are talking about.
My apologies. I was hoping you'd discuss my argument, but apparently, I've pushed a button.
Audie
Veteran Member
Winner frubal
SkepticThinker
Veteran Member
So you're just going to believe what you want to believe because you want to believe it.
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IndigoChild5559
Loving God and my neighbor as myself.
Ridiculous. We know what the impressions of the earth are for more primitive peoples, because historically we have dealt with people that lacked science and the benefits of world travel. There is no reason to believe that the authors of the Bible were any different.
Clearly, creation myths are not meant to be taken literally. If I told your the Navajo story of creation, you would realize right away it is a creation myth, and not history or science. If I told you the Zulu story of creation, you would realize right away it is a creation myth, and not history or science. The difficulty here is not the genre of Genesis 1, but that you take it literally simply because it is YOUR creation myth, which logically makes no sense.
Science doesn't tell us everything, but the things it does tell us, we know because they are based on evidence. The loyalty is not to the conclusions, but to the evidence. Thus, if new evidence comes to light that would alter the conclusions even a little, we follow that evidence to the new and better conclusion. Your best bet, when trying to understand origins, is to stick with science. Not misinterpret a myth as being literal.
Even a lie can be based on evidence. That some idea is based on evidence doesn't make it necessary true.
joelr
Well-Known Member
These characters actually do what their name means. A marker of fictional stories.
Adam means “son of Earth”, Abraham means “father of a multitude”.
In the Romulus myth Romulus means “baby Rome, “little Rome”, classic marker of myth. Romulus was the fictional founder of Rome who died and resurrected and ascended.
In historical studies it's consensus and taught in university courses that Genesis is reworking Mesopotamian creation/flood myth up to 1000 years older, found on stone tablets.
These are all peer-reviewed PhD textbooks/monographs,
John Collins, Introduction to the Hebrew Bible 3rd ed.
“Biblical creation stories draw motifs from Mesopotamia, Much of the language and imagery of the Bible was culture specific and deeply embedded in the traditions of the Near East.
2nd ed. The Old Testament, Davies and Rogerson
“We know from the history of the composition of Gilamesh that ancient writers did adapt and re-use older stories……
It is safer to content ourselves with comparing the motifs and themes of Genesis with those of other ancient Near East texts.
In this way we acknowledge our belief that the biblical writers adapted existing stories, while we confess our ignorance about the form and content of the actual stories that the Biblical writers used.”
The Old Testament, A Historical and Literary Introduction to the Hebrew Scriptures, M. Coogan
“Genesis employs and alludes to mythical concepts and phrasing, but at the same time it also adapts transforms and rejected them”
God in Translation, Smith
“…the Bibles authors fashioned whatever they may have inherited of the Mesopotamian literary tradition on their own terms”
THE OT Text and Content, Matthews, Moyer
“….a great deal of material contained in the primeval epics in Genesis is borrowed and adapted from the ancient cultures of that region.”
The Formation of Genesis 1-11, Carr
“The previous discussion has made clear how this story in Genesis represents a complex juxtaposition of multiple traditions often found separately in the Mesopotamian literary world….”
The Priestly Vision of Genesis, Smith
“….storm God and cosmic enemies passed into Israelite tradition. The biblical God is not only generally similar to Baal as a storm god, but God inherited the names of Baal’s cosmic enemies, with names such as Leviathan, Sea, Death and Tanninim.”
An error can be based in the misinterpretation of evidence, but to call it a lie, there should be consciousness of that fact and one need be making a deliberate effort to present a known false conclusion. That opinion is not based in evidence.
It does if the reasoning applied to it is valid, that is, free of fallacy. That defines a sound conclusion, and sound conclusions are correct conclusions. That's the power of critical thought. It is a prescribed method of transforming ideas from premises to conclusions, a defined path to truth if you will. Follow it faithfully, and it will take you where you wish to go - to correct ideas, which means demonstrably (empirically) correct.
Consider arithmetic, which is pure reason applied to addends (numbers to be added together). It is also a narrowly prescribed path, but follow it faithfully, and you will arrive at a demonstrably correct sum every time, but vary from it even a little - say, one 2+2=5 along the way - and you will an "untrue" sum.
What we see on these threads too often is people employing some rogue logic they claim connects some proffered evidence to their beliefs about what they say it means. Those are the people who make your comment correct.
How to tell the difference between those with sound conclusions and the rest? One must learn the method himself. One must learn how to evaluate the arguments of others for soundness. The next best thing is to identify trustworthy others who can do this for you. The most helpless position is being unaware that this kind of thing is possible and assuming that all opinions are equal because they're all just best guesses. This is called Dunning-Kruger syndrome, where one mistakenly thinks his own uninformed opinions are as good as any other.
TagliatelliMonster
Veteran Member
Eum.... your "science" might.
Actual science however, realizes that there is no such thing as adam and eve.
And don't confuse "mitochondrial eve" and "y-chromosome adam" with the biblical similarly named mythical people.
In reality, these two individuals did not live at the same time. They were seperated by several 10s of thousands of years, nor were they the "only" humans alive at the time.
Human population has never been below a couple thousand, which was the smallest population in human history. Considered a serious genetic bottleneck and at that time our ancestors were on the brink of extinction... this bottleneck coincided with extreme conditions in their habitat (like the most recent one being the Toba volcanic eruption).
The "independent urantia related website"., as given by the URANTIA revelators back in 1955, the year of publication of URANTIA.
where is that historical confirmation by the URANTIA revelation?, here on this independent URANTIA-related website, with the scientific info and all:
UBtheNEWS: Adam and Eve Report – Urantia Book Study Aids
UBannotated.com
That's just golden.
TagliatelliMonster
Veteran Member
That's not actual science.not only what i already shared above, but also this:
(oct 29, 2019)
From Ann Gauger and Ola Hössjer, a New Standard for the Science of a “First Couple” | Evolution News
Their scrupulous work found that Jerry Coyne and others, in bullying Christians and Jews on how “we can dismiss a physical Adam and Eve with near scientific certainty,” were in reality poorly supported.evolutionnews.org
this site is from the actual pioneers of the modern and post-modern Intelligent Design scientific theory. ...
That's religious pseudo-scientific drivel by people who have literally documented their agenda of smuggling their bible into science classes with trickery and deceit.
You can read all about it in the infamous "wedge document" from the "discovery institute".
These are exposed and demonstrated liars and frauds.
TagliatelliMonster
Veteran Member
you are the one actually being dishonest, buddy; example:
for much more on 'the dover trial' go here, friends:
Ten Myths About Dover: #1, "Judge Jones Addressed the Actual Theory of ID, Not a Straw Man" | Evolution News
Contrary to what you hear from the media, from evolution activists, and from Darwin defenders in academia, ID's big day in court has not yet come.
Search Results for “dover” | Evolution News
Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District - Wikipedia
Outcomes[edit]
Legal[edit]
On December 20, 2005, Jones issued his 139-page findings of fact and decision ruling that the Dover mandate requiring the statement to be read in class was unconstitutional. The ruling concluded that intelligent design is not science, and permanently barred the board from requiring teachers to denigrate or disparage the scientific theory of evolution, and from requiring ID to be taught as an alternative theory.[3]
TagliatelliMonster
Veteran Member
There isn't anything else to say.
The site is fraudulent.
You are using a fraudulent site that tries to defend itself by claiming it is not fraudulent.
That's like a pathological liar claiming he isn't lying.
It doesn't hold much weight.
TagliatelliMonster
Veteran Member
The fact that you spew creationist fraudulent websites masquarading as science, tells us all we need to know.
Subduction Zone
Veteran Member
Which is why scientific ideas are continually checked and rechecked. And the science that refutes your myths continually refute them.
There are creationists that have the scientific education where they could devise a scientific model of their creation beliefs, but they do not even try to write an article that could pass peer review. Why don't they do that?
They only publish through sources that have a terrible history of lying. Sources that require the people who publish there to swear to not use the scientific method, making everything in those journals pseudoscience.
Why is that the case? Why are there no honest and educated creationists?
Audie
Veteran Member
Um, because it is impossible ?
Subduction Zone
Veteran Member
Just for fun I try to have an open mind that almost lets my brain fall out. In this case my almost escaped brain assumed that the myth was true, but yet for some strange reason creationists can not find any evidence for their beliefs. Why. . . . it is almost as if their beliefs were pure horse puckey.
I agree that you don't know science, and we know what you believe based on what you claimed to believe and based on the pseudoscience site to which you linked. I wouldn't go to such a site for information about anything apart from seeing the latest specious creationist arguments. ID was and still is fraud. It's already been demonstrated by science and litigated in court including Dover - two places where evidence matters, and faith-based beliefs don't:stop saying i dont know science, you do not know who i am nor what i do, you are just dishonest like i see from other of your posts here at RF, and you dont know anything on dover.
and for people here who wanna know the actual facts, i already provided the links above so here is the dover reality again:
Search Results for “dover” | Evolution News
Scientists can generally back defend their claims with reason applied to evidence, and the ones who don't are called out for it by peers. The creationist cannot. All he has is faith, and faith is not a path to truth. In fact, it's the best way to accumulate false beliefs, such as that naturalistic abiogenesis is statistically impossible, and useless, unfalsifiable beliefs such as creationism.
The Bible is evidence of nothing about reality except that it was written. It's not even evidence that the writers believed what they wrote themselves much less that anything in it actually happened. To answer those questions, we need to consult the rest of reality (empiricism). Guess what? David was real but the global flood wasn't.
Not a good argument for the Bible being the authentic word of a deity. The god of Abraham itself is depicted as evil and stupid in the flood myth by these writers. He's evil for blaming his creation for his own engineering failures. He's evil for drowning them rather than magically modifying them. He's evil for choosing drowning over less terrifying means of death. And he's evil for indiscriminately killing most non-human terrestrial like. He's depicted as stupid for attempting to remedy the problem using the same defective breeding stock.
I assure you that primitive people invented that story and that god, and it's a great argument in refutation of your claim that people are too evil and stupid to write a book depicting an evil and stupid deity. Their god was created in their own image.
The interesting question for me is why. Why write that exceedingly unflattering story about your allegedly tri-omni god and include it in your mythology? Hint: marine fossils found on mountaintops. Try to explain that under the belief in such a god. How and why did they get there? Back then, everybody was as ignorant of orogenesis and seafloor uplifting as many people today still are, so that means a flood that submerged all land.
There are several words with distinct definitions all spelled and pronounced "land." Land as in dry land is an uncountable noun. There can't be two of them just as there can't be two furnitures or waters, just two pieces of furniture or three glasses of water, pieces and glasses being countable, but not furniture or water.
For lands to be countable, we need to be referring to discrete lands, like countries.
The oceans aren't in a single place, but they are topologically one ocean.
It doesn't. The Bible has no understanding of cosmogenesis, nucleogenesis, the formation of the solar system and earth, the dimensions, shape or structure of the earth, how continents and mountains form, how life got there, or where the rain comes from. The words in it tell us so.
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